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If real estate has “location, location, location” then recruitment should certainly coin “timing, timing, timing” for our industry!
Once, I had a candidate in final stages with a client on a Friday. I was buzzing about my weekend happy as a bee. Monday morning, I learn the hiring manager went to lunch over the weekend and bumped into someone that used to work for them at a different company, but they hadn’t seen each other in 10 years. They got to talking about their current companies and decided the nearly-filled job was worth discussing with this person (who had also recently decided to consider new roles). After the hiring manager carefully considered some other recent staff transitions, he tweaked the parameters of the open job a little bit. Within 24 hours, they’d declined my candidate who was no longer completely qualified, and moved forward with an offer to the other person. HOW RANDOM IS THAT? A simple, chance meeting at lunch ON A WEEKEND changed the outcome of an entire search. TIMING, MUCH!?!?
I have often told outstanding candidates that sometimes they are the PERFECT candidate for a job, but timing gets in the way. If they are resume #104 and the recruiter closes the pool after reviewing 100, that company has never even seen their resume! And sadly for all, that company might hire a less qualified person as a result. The candidate shouldn’t feel disheartened that maybe they weren’t good enough for some reason, sometimes it really is just timing.
When was the job posted? How many internal candidates did they have before posting it to external candidates? Is this search extremely confidential or is it widely known that the job is available? How many candidates are currently in process and are they all at the same stage or varying stages of the interview process? What time of year is it? Holidays and vacations mean delays and these create missed opportunities in availability and interest from both a company and a candidate.
If I could offer any word of encouragement to a job-seeker, it would be to consider timing. Do what you can to eliminate delays. Be EXTREMELY quick to act on freshly posted positions – I mean apply that same day. If you hear a rumor about a job, learn who to contact in HR and contact them immediately! If you are getting declined for jobs or just never hearing back at all, remind yourself that timing was likely a huge factor in the decision. Beating yourself up over the jobs you didn’t get won’t leave you looking awesome for the next one.
Do you have any stories as a recruiter about how timing has impacted your searches? Or have you noticed as a job-seeker when timing was the reason for you getting (or not getting) a job?
I wish I could find a lovely place to send job descriptions to die.
You know what I want instead? Job clouds.
Doesn’t that sound lovely?
A job cloud is a lovely, puffy arrangement of projects and functions that need to be completed in order for a company to be successful. Job clouds can overlap across functional areas as the needs of the company change and the people in each cloud can change as their experience and education increase.
So what happens when a new client or project comes on the scene? GO TO THE CLOUD…Ah yes, take a look at all the employees whose availability, personality and current experience makes them a good candidate to successfully engage and offer them the opportunity to participate in something new. GADZOOKS! They might LEARN SOMETHING! You might learn something from them! That’s so crazy.
I know one of my fantastic left-brained friends would want to organize the cloud into tidy project lists and start assigning agendas, building committees and the like, but let’s not over-document the thing. The beauty and the success is in the movement and ever-changing nature of the cloud. I envision implementation to involve something more like a web-based database where employees update their own profile with new skills. Failure to do so means you’re not really interested in contributing in new ways, so maybe you could be encouraged to go to a less interesting company. Managers could update project lists and define necessary education and/or experience for a successful outcome. Employees could apply for projects as they become available and/or managers could proactively seek out talent. Corporate recruiting would focus on strategically identifying gaps between existing talent and upcoming project needs, then bring in new talent or devise training/professional development programs to fill the needs.
That IT guy who barely talks might have an amazing eye for color and/or create ridiculously fresh marketing campaigns. Your recruiter might love numbers and just want to do a little finance sometimes. In the end, you get consistently challenged employees who view their role as making the company successful by contributing in new ways, instead of the “that’s not in my job description” mentality. And maybe it’d be a way of re-labeling some of those so-called bad hires. Maybe the person wasn’t a bad hire, maybe they should be contributing in a different way that originally anticipated. These personnel adjustments wouldn’t be as hard to absorb if a variety of projects were regularly available for assignment.
I know it would take a unique company to be able to transition to this effectively, but I’m a dreamer. Head in the clouds kind of girl here. Still, as people redefine their expectations of the workplace, I think it’s the future.
I heard that if you have a goal, you should never say that you’re going to start it sometime in the future. Don’t say, “I’ll start that tomorrow morning” or “I’ll do that after ____” because it creates a sense of non-urgency in your subconscious. If you can put it off for awhile, why bother doing it at all? If you want to achieve something, fully commit by taking the first step RIGHT NOW.
Nearly every HR and recruiting conference has a session about “The Future of Recruiting.” What about the present? What about the change factors we need to make TODAY to get there? It’s the individuals and companies who are making changes TODAY who will shape the future and reap its rewards.
HR Departments – Start utilizing your recruiting partners as real partners, instead of competition. Pick up the phone and tell your recruiter what they can do to help you and readily provide info that will help them be successful. You’re paying them to help you, right? Then, cross those recruiting tasks you just delegated off of your to-do list and get to those strategic projects you never have time to tackle. When open positions at your company are being filled with quality people (thanks to a well-informed recruiting partner) and you’re achieving other major HR goals within your organization, everyone wins – especially your employees and your bottom-line! Make that call right now.
Recruiters – When you get that call from HR, start thinking like a busy hiring manager and busy HR department. You’ve been hired to alleviate pressure, not intensify it. Tell your hiring managers that they’ll see fewer, but better qualified candidates. Know. Your. Client. Research their industry, understand the challenges in their market, know what potential candidates will say about them and how to overcome that. Commit to using your expertise to reduce the workload of your client’s managers. High-quality, pre-screened candidates are harder to find. Accept it and then conquer it, starting right now.
Candidates/Jobseekers – Quit your whining. Yeah, the economy has been miserable for awhile. Get over it. There are jobs out there – do you want one? If a recruiter calls you about a job and says they think you’d be qualified, don’t make them wish they hadn’t called. Don’t tell me about how much you hate the job search process, how your last boss was a jerk and the company was useless. I’m not your friend, I’m representing your potential boss. Use good manners, dress professionally, speak clearly and make sure your follow-up is timely and thoughtful. Make it your goal that everyone who talks to you will be happy that they had the opportunity. Remember that you are representing yourself AND your recruiter when you speak to an employer. Don’t embarrass me. Think of the most professional, successful person you know and mimic their best qualities. The way they dress, how they act and how they communicate is probably what made them successful. Start doing these things now.
What could you do now to move yourself and your company forward? What habits have you been TRYING to break instead of just breaking them? We could change the world starting today. Why wait for the future?
P.S. A tip of the hat to G.K. Chesterton who wrote, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” (I actually thought I was being creative with my title, but then realized it sounded a little too familiar, thus requiring further research.) The American Chesterton Society suggests that he meant some things are so important, that you should do them yourself, even if it means doing it poorly. So again I say, don’t wait until the day you can do something important perfectly, just start doing it today! You’ll get better.
If you’re in HR or a recruiter, you’ve had offers declined. What I find absolutely enchanting about such a miserable outcome is the underlying qualities that sneak out during this downhill process. AND, what if the candidate who declined is really the best candidate for the job?!?
Sometimes the most impressive candidates can suddenly get nasty during offer negotiation. They can become arrogant and demanding in their communications, suddenly ask for $20K more than they’d originally requested, or require outrageous benefits. They can drag out their decision for weeks, leaving the company wondering why they’d made the offer in the first place. Hiring managers can be difficult too. It’s can often become an ugly game of expecting the other person to step a little past the middle, a little bit of an unequal compromise to keep the upper hand.
In those instances, it’s easy to say goodbye to a candidate and never look back. But what if a candidate handles the offer and negotiation tactfully, but in the end rejects the final offer? Many reasons for declining a job offer have nothing to do with the company or a candidate’s interest in working there. Things like:
Any of these could result in a declined offer by a highly qualified candidate, just due to bad timing or temporary budget restrictions. As the search continues and you re-evaluate the pool of top candidates, do you ever go back and reconsider that earlier candidate if their original reason for declining is no longer an issue? How do candidates feel about receiving a second offer from a company?
It’s sometimes a matter of pride on both sides of the table. If there was a strong enough match between the job opportunity and that ideal candidate to make the original offer, doesn’t that initial match still exist a little while later? I had an HR manager tell me he’d ask his hiring manager, “Other than your pride, why are we not reconsidering this person?” That’s ballsy HR gold. The kind of relationship every HR Manager and Recruiter should aspire to have with hiring managers they support in their organization. Even if it’s not about pride, being able to clarify that is priceless.
Would you go back and make a second offer to a candidate, after your first offer had been declined? Why or why not? As a candidate, what would you think?
Our client hired us to identify a Human Resources Manager for their growing financial services firm. They were looking for someone who could manage HR functions as a “department of one,” but have enough experience to offer leadership and guidance as they continue to grow.
This was an exciting search with the opportunity for me to make a lot of fantastic, new connections in HR! I appreciated that as a client, they had a clear idea of their needs, but were open to considering candidates who were a half-step outside of what they’d originally considered, with regard to secondary criteria like industry experience and current employer size. This helped to broaden their candidate pool without deviating from their primary search criteria.
If I spoke to you as a candidate for this role or if you offered referrals to great candidates in our search, THANK YOU for your time and consideration! I hope to have the opportunity to help you or someone you know again in the future.
Hi! I'm Jessica. I believe that recruiting (when done correctly) is about creativity, minimizing limitations and applying new methods to make the whole hiring & job search process a little more efficient for everyone. In this blog, I will focus on recruiting and how HR, jobseekers and recruiters can make the hiring process a little smoother – and maybe a little more fun!
